Bonjour again from the Camargue, in southern France. We had a lovely and illuminating visit last year and there were so many surprising and interesting things going on we thought we should do it again. Getting there is a trek. Three plane rides and a 90 minute drive but it all went very smoothly. We arrived in the village of St. Laurent d'Aigouze about 7 PM on Sept 26th.  We were, of course, exhausted, but our hosts were so welcoming and gracious we had to have a drink with them. We would be experiencing French country living, and cooking, for the next four days. 

_8504527 Above is the symbol of the Camargue, a combination of an anchor, a heart, and the cross. This region is basically the Rhone river delta, going from just west of Marseille to Sete. It is dead flat with half of it under water in lakes or marshes. Below are Sylvie and Gerard, our hosts in their lovely back garden, holding their pets. Yes the turtle is one of the pets. They have a large family of them living in the garden.

Sylvie and Gerard One of our primary objectives in traveling all this way was to photograph the white horses and black bulls of the Camargue. All of the bulls used in French type bullfighting (where the bull is not killed) are raised in this area and the cult of the bull dominates the region. Every town and village has a bull festival of some kind. To maximize my time I signed up for a workshop with Cecile Domens, a very accomplished photographer who lives in the Camargue. You can see her work at cecile-domens-photo.com.

Cecile Domens

Friday Sept 27th

We had scheduled a cushion day before the photo sessions with Cecile, to recover from the jet lag and possibly to pursue the other major photo subject in the Camargue, flamingos! In the spring and summer there are up to 50,000 flamingos nesting in the marshes. Most of them migrate to Africa for the winter but about 5,000 stay all year.  

Friday morning we both managed to sleep in and got the worst of the jet lag behind us. So after lunch we set out to the Camargue Ornithological Park. The entire Camargue is a haven for wild birds but this part of it has prepared walking paths and the birds are a little more indifferent to people. 

_8504543 _8504634 _8504806 _8504940 _8504943 Below is a juvenile, of which we only saw a few.

_8504811 Coming at this time of year means a lot of the most interesting behaviors, such as courtship and fighting, are not on display. But we did get a little taste of it, pictured below.

_8504585 One odd behavior we did see is demonstrated below. It looks like bathing. The birds sit down in the water and scrub themselves with their heads, just like scrubbing a four year old boy. Then they stand up and spread their wings to dry.

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I managed to get a few of them in flight.

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We would see flamingos all over the Camargue throughout the trip. I'd hoped to get a sunset shot of them but we ran out of steam. Still a little jet lagged.

Here are the Black & White, all in one slide show. Hope you like 'em!

Monday May 14,

Time to be heading home and we had the whole day to get back to Dublin. One of our primary goals for this trip was to do a little family research for the Conners. Rollie's ancestral home is Castlepollard in County Westmeath, which is right on the way to Dublin. So we pulled in there to do some snooping. First we checked out the great manor house at Tullynally Castle. (love the name!) The purpose of this visit was to reconnoiter the place so that in the event we discover that Rollie actually is the rightful heir, we'll have a plan to expel the squatters. 

_8508925 Boo was not enthused. Her take was that until 2028 Victor St is completely and totally finished he has no business taking on a project like this. This dampened our enthusiasm. We then spent about an hour at the local library talking to their resident genealogy guru and concluded there were no more Conners in this area. Darn! I was hoping we could at least get a free lunch out of them. Back on the road to Dublin we took a look at the map and saw that we would be passing near Trim Castle. It looked like a good place to check out and as it turned out it was!  _8508931 If the place looks vaguely familiar it might be because it has been the location for a number of movies. The most recent big movie shot here was Braveheart. 

_8508936 _8508956 _8508992 The construction of the castle was started early in the Norman period by Hugh de Lacy, one of the first wave of Normans. The castle is sited alongside the River Boyne and the grounds on both sides of the river are now a park with walking trails. It is one of the few castles in Ireland that still has most of the outer wall intact and everything here is original to the Middle Ages. 

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_8509061 Just alongside the castle was a herd of donkeys for the tourists to pet and feed.

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Despite all of these side trips we still got into Dublin in time for another outing so we drove back over to Howth, where this trip started. This time we had better weather. The ferries and cruise ships were just heading out.

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And this was the end of a very excellent trip to Ireland. Thank you for coming along. Stay tuned though, as I will still be posting some black & white images soon.